Ricardo MELÉNDEZ-ORTIZ is the co-founder and Chief Executive of ICTSD. Before joining ICTSD in 1996, Mr. Meléndez-Ortiz was general director and co-founder of Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano in Quito, Ecuador and served as counsellor and first secretary of the Colombian Mission to the International Organisations in Geneva. During his time as a government official, Mr. Meléndez-Ortiz was directly involved in a range of multilateral and bilateral negotiations and policymaking processes. He was a negotiator and delegate for Colombia in the Uruguay Round, the UNCED process, UNCTAD VIII, the Climate Change Convention, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Montreal Protocol and bilateral trade and investment-related negotiation processes.
Mr. Meléndez-Ortiz also acted as spokesperson for the G77 in several fora and served as chair of the UN Standing Committees on Commodities and on Trade Preferences. In addition, he has also served as Principal Advisor to the Colombian Minister of Economic Development and as Chief of Administration of the Office of the President of Colombia. Mr. Meléndez-Ortiz has edited and published a wide range of books, articles and opinion pieces in English, French and Spanish on trade and sustainable development and sits on advisory committees and boards of several international non-profit initiatives.
He is the Chair of the Global Action Network’s Council, a Member of the Board of Intellectual Property Watch, and Chairman of the Group on Environment Trade and Investment of the World Conservation Union and Vice President of its Commission on Economic, Environment and Social Policy. He has also been a member of the U.N. Secretary General Millennium Project Task Force on Trade; the WTO’s Director General NGO Advisory Group; and, the Steering Committee of DfID’s Global Trade and Finance Architecture Initiative; as well as Advisor to the EU-China Sustainable Trade Project; the Global Governance Network of Globus et Locus (Milano); and the MOFCOM/IISD China Sustainable Development and Global Markets Task Force. Mr. Meléndez-Ortiz holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from Harvard University and the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá. He is of joint Colombian and Belgium nationality.